On November 27, 2018   /   Creativity, Psychology and Mythology

Via & By  https://elainemansfield.com/

As I might mention; what I have learned in my life it’s been by my brother Al Fazel who was a genius and I’m gratefully thankful to him, he was an ingrained writer as our father was. they both could not do anything but to write. I say that because, as I read this as an always wonderful article by 
Elaine Mansfield a lovely friend of mine, I’d just remember of an issue which had been put in our regular discussion meeting in Iran in the ’80s by my brother and it was the mather of using Mask in our everyday life. 
He argued that we all need a mask to protect our inner secrets; even to hide our fears and weakness. It was a wonderful remembering in my life which I’d keep them in my heart and mind forever.

In 1994, our women’s mythology group created and presented a play using masks. We had explored the story of “Eros and Psyche” for a few years, so knew every detail.

I played the Goddess Aphrodite who, in this myth, is fierce, jealous, demanding, and anything but lovely.

The masks were bought or made by a member of the group who was an art teacher and character in the play. In Greek theatre, a mask used in this way is called a persona. C.G. Jung used the term persona to mean our outer personality which is like a mask compared to our inmost authentic Self.

Along with raging and beating Psyche who dared to fall in love with her son Eros, Aphrodite gave Psyche Four Labors, each more impossible than the last. Psyche faced each task with despair, but helpers arrived and each task was finished. In the process, Psyche (Soul) was initiated into the depths of Feminine Wisdom.

Working with the story brought us closer to each other and taught us new ways to approach life’s impossible challenges. That first depth immersion in mythology was an adventure and an initiation for me.

Years later, I created my own masks in Marion Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms Workshops. I’ll call these masks unintentional because I didn’t have a specific character in mind or know what they would look like or symbolize before the process began.

In 2003, about 40 women made face moulds the first night of the week-long workshop in a downstairs room filled with art supplies. First, a thick layer of Vaseline to protect the skin and then bandage-like pieces of gauze cut in strips dipped in warm water and applied to the face in a few layers. Then lying still for 20 minutes to let the plaster dry into a hard mould before another woman eased the mask off my face. After it dried, we painted our masks with acrylic paints. (Directions for mask-making at this link.)

We had five days to create our masks while working with a mythological story, doing bodywork, dancing, and exploring dreams and Jungian ideas. The art room stayed open 24 hours a day for midnight inspirations. Some nights I worked late.

A Golden Bull with juvenile horns emerged–an image of a young and vital masculine energy in me. I cut off the bottom part of the mask under the chin to open its voice and throat. I was surprised by my Bull, but not everyone was.

“I know him,” my husband Vic said when I showed him the mask after arriving home. “I know him so well.”

Vic knew the bullish and sometimes belligerent parts of me better than anyone–including me since I’d rather deny or conceal those parts of myself. He knew my stubborn persistent intellect and desire to create and learn, a more positive aspect of this bull. Looking back, that bull was a step toward withdrawing a projection from Vic and finding my own inner masculine.

I made the third mask in a workshop in 2007. Vic had a brief respite from treatment that summer, so I signed up for a Marion Woodman workshop in Canada. Vic and I looked forward to a week apart after a year of unrelenting cancer therapy and constant togetherness.

As the women gathered to discuss a mythological story on the second morning, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Your husband called. You need to call him back,” she said. My heart pounded. He wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency, but his message was about my mom who had lingered with Alzheimer’s for ten years. She was dying and there wasn’t time for me to get home. I’ve written about dancing my relief and grief that weekend.

Vic sat with my mom until she died. I’d pre-arranged her cremation. Everything else could wait until I returned home. My mask and need for inner nourishment felt pressing. I stayed.

I named my mask “Our Lady of Praise and Sorrow.” She weeps on one side and sings praise on the other. I said a tender goodbye to my mother in ritual and dance, but the mask took me deeper, to what I truly feared losing. I was grateful for the 41 years I’d been with Vic, supporting, growing, and trusting each other. I grieved over our future and that  word “incurable.”

When I showed my mask to Vic, he inspected every detail. “Thank you,” he said. He knew. The mask reflected grief and praise for our partnership. It spoke to a new life I’d live without him after his death. It helped me trust that I could hold on to gratitude even while I grieved.

With gratitude to the women who have gathered for over 25 years to study mythology together.

Do stories from mythology and fairy tales become guides to help you understand yourself and life’s challenges? For an article about Eros and Psyche, see Clutched: An Essential Lesson from Psyche’s Fourth Labor. Or if you want to see how knowing this story helped me understand my ferocious Mother-in-Law, see My Lover’s Mama and the Negative Mother Archetype. I’ve written many articles about working with Marion, so here’s a link to my Marion Woodman archives.

There’re many discussions about simile between Jesus and Buddha, and it’s true. there’re many points to compare. but sometimes I think that there’s also an unfair act to compare them on the history, because, in the case of Jesus, there are so may veiling by the religious actors in the history. to be honest, I think that there’re many lies about Jesus and we don’t really know how he really was. 🙂 

via 
C.G. Jung & Wholeness

by Craig Nelson with thanks 

“Jung found the Buddha to be a more ’complete human being’ than the Christ because the Buddha lived his life and took as his task the realization of the Self through understanding, whereas with the Christ this realization was more like a fate which happened to him.”
Marie Louise von Franz, Jung’s Myth in Our Time 

I just wanna thank you all my friends and followers here for accepting me, a nobody! in this wonderful circle with so many known and great writers and artists. I was and has been always a humble person in my life, as the life learned me so, and therefore, it is a huge luck and happiness to be accepted in such an amazing intellectual community. 

heartily grateful and greeting all ❤ ❤  

William Blake: The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun

<<There’s no doubt that we all have both sides (the shadow and bright side) in us, the fact is we must try not to ignore the unwilling one and give our best to know it. the great heroes are they who have no fear to acknowledge them both >>

Jung: On the demonic dynamism of the Shadow in mass movements…

via http://jungcurrents.com/

Collected Works Volume 7 – Two Essays on Analytical Psychology Quote Shadow

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism.

The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself.

But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster, and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost.

Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, the man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature.

Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true.

Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.

 

Collected Works  

Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

 

 Page 35

How can Words sounds so beautiful! Marie Louise von Franz. an incredible woman ❤

By Craig Nelson: C.G. Jung & Wholeness

 

the anima, speaking in vision: I am the flower of the field, the lily of the valley, I am the mother of fair love, knowledge & sacred hope. I am very beautiful without taint. I am the law in the priest, the word in the prophet, the counsel in the sage. I can kill and bring to life, and there is no one who can deliver anything out of my hand.